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The Changing Scene -- Grand Opera House and Maison Blanche

The streetcars are still on Canal Street (21st century versions, though) but much of what we see in this photograph is no longer there. The large ornate structure on the corner of Canal and Dauphine Streets was the old Maison Blanche Building, built ca. 1887 to house D. Mercier and Sons department store. A new MB store and office building (now the Ritz Carlton Hotel) replaced it in 1908. The Grand Opera House, built as the Varieties Theatre in 1871, was demolished around the same time; a Kress department store went up in its place in 1910 (that structure has also since been incorporated into the Ritz Carlton). The row of four-story buildings at the far left was replaced, also in 1910, by the Audubon Building. That edifice has been vacant since before Katrina, but new owners have recently announced plans to convert it into the Hotel Indigo, a 180-room boutique hotel.